"The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching." Aristotle | Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this Wordpress website are the views and opinions of the content creator, Dr. Reggie Goodwin, and should not be construed as shared, or sourced from The Environmental Protection Agency, or any organizations with which they have cooperative, or business relationships.
The smallest quantum computer to date has been claimed by a team of researchers in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Using strings of trapped ions that are addressed using laser pulses, Ivan Pogorelov at the University of Innsbruck and colleagues created a system that contains 24 fully-entangled quantum bits (qubits) and is housed in two industry-standard server racks.
The teams says that the computer’s performance matches that of existing state-of-the-art systems and believe that their setup could bring the widespread use of practical quantum computers a step closer to reality.
As technology improves, quantum computers are integrating increasing numbers of qubits with the goal of creating devices that can solve certain problems much faster than conventional computers. Existing ways of integrating qubits often require a room full of equipment so researchers have now turned their attention to developing much more compact and practical implementations. These efforts face numerous challenges, however, including how to reliably manufacture large numbers of identical qubits and how to maintain the quantum coherence of qubits during complex operations such as the quantum entanglement of ions.
Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Politics
Fahrenheit to Celsius
Celsius to Fahrenheit
(5/9)(°F – 32) = °C
(9/5) °C + 32 = °F
Handy-Dandy Conversion Table
Even though the Big Think video is informative, my critique is it presumes much regarding the audience, presumably the species.
The assumption is that even with the equivalent of supercomputers on our hips, humans will be motivated beyond the video to know the difference between Fahrenheit, and Celsius. What the average human mind will process is: “two degrees,” which doesn’t sound like much as mathematical dexterity is only encouraged in those interested in STEM.
On Wednesday, when former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, his remarks on the occasion contained some of the usual sentiment about the importance of being a bold and inspiring nation—but they also contained something a bit unusual. “Here’s a bold embrace of internationalism: let’s join the rest of the world and go metric,” he said. “I happened to live in Canada as they completed the process. Believe me, it is easy. It doesn’t take long before 34 degrees is hot. Only Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States aren’t metric and it will help our economy!”
The resistance to the Metric System (originally from the French) has to quote Ms. Rothman, “a long, tortuous history” in the United States. Resistance to “change” is inherently political, and we have but one of the two major political parties famous for looking backward, as well as celebration, and apotheosis of a hierarchal status quo.
I’m not saying the video isn’t informative. The above formulas were drilled into me in middle school science class, and since I have made my living, and continue my education in STEM, mental conversion is a familiar exercise.
It should be for average citizens also. The video concerns two degrees Celsius hotter; the title I derived from one degree hotter (in bold below):
(9/5) 0°C + 32 = 32°F
(9/5) 1°C + 32 = 1.8 + 32 = 33.8°F
(9/5) 2°C + 32 = 3.6 + 32 = 35.6°F
(9/5) 3°C + 32 = 5.4 + 32 = 37.4°F
(9/5) 4°C + 32 = 7.2 + 32 = 39.2°F
Add that to whatever is average summer temperatures in the Arctic, California, Texas, or North Carolina, and you can see why Environmental Scientists are hair-on-fire excited.
Some of the best science lectures I’ve attended are when the speaker assumes the audience is hearing the information for the first time, provides a primer of about 15 – 20 minutes, and about a thirty-five to forty minute lecture, allowing time for questions. It respects the intelligence, and time of the audience.
The opposite: the lecturer is so excited about their work, they hit Warp Seven after clearing orbital drydock, and head for Andromeda, 2.537 million light-years away. The only time they stop is when the host informs them their time is up, and it’s evident the crowd has tuned out, checking social media, and drooling as they wait for the lecture/torture to end.
To communicate the gravity of the situation, I feel we need to communicate better to the general public for buy-in that: 1. There is a crisis, 2. We have to do something about it.
By logical extension, science communication can mean life or death. Ninety-nine-point-five percent of new COVID deaths are from the unvaccinated, so armchair conspiracy theories are not proving helpful. I took the Moderna vaccine. I did not become magnetic. I did not become the carrier of a variant. I’m a grandfather, so my infertility at this stage is kind of irrelevant. No one started tracking me (for what reason, God only knows).
Please feel free to share my post, and check my calculations. We all need a clear understanding, not fossil fuel industry/corporate lobbyist gaslighting, on where we’re headed if we don’t heed the warnings.
“Science-fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.” Isaac Asimov
Optimal size: wind farm efficiency drops as installations become bigger. (Courtesy: iStock/ssuaphoto)
Topics: Alternate Energy, Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Green Tech, Thermodynamics
Optimizing the placement of turbines within a wind farm can significantly increase energy extraction – but only until the installation reaches a certain size, researchers in the US conclude. This is just one finding of a computational study on wind turbines’ effects on the airflow around them, and consequently the ability of nearby turbines – and even nearby wind farms – to extract energy from that airflow.
Wind power could supply more than a third of global energy by 2050, so the researchers hope their analysis will assist in better designs of wind farms.
It is well known that the efficiencies of turbines in a wind farm can be significantly lower than that of a single turbine on its own. While small wind farms can achieve a power density of over 10 W/m2, this can drop to a little as 1 W/m2 in very large installations The first law of thermodynamics dictates that turbines must reduce the energy of the wind that has passed through them. However, turbines also inject turbulence into the flow, which can make it more difficult for downstream turbines to extract energy.
“People were already aware of these issues,” says Enrico Antonini of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California, “but no one had ever defined what controls these numbers.”
A robotic hand with the AiFoam artificially innervated smart foam, which enables it to sense objects in proximity by detecting their electrical fields and also self-heals if it gets cut, is pictured at National University Singapore’s Materials Sciences and Engineering lab in Singapore June 30, 2021. REUTERS/Travis Teo
SINGAPORE, July 6 (Reuters) – Singapore researchers have developed a smart foam material that allows robots to sense nearby objects, and repairs itself when damaged, just like human skin.
Artificially innervated foam, or AiFoam, is a highly elastic polymer created by mixing fluoropolymer with a compound that lowers surface tension.
This allows the spongy material to fuse easily into one piece when cut, according to the researchers at the National University of Singapore.
“There are many applications for such a material, especially in robotics and prosthetic devices, where robots need to be a lot more intelligent when working around humans,” explained lead researcher Benjamin Tee.
To replicate the human sense of touch, the researchers infused the material with microscopic metal particles and added tiny electrodes underneath the surface of the foam.
The normalized resistance under magnetic fields and anisotropic upper critical magnetic fields of the CsV3Sb5 single crystal. Credit: Chinese Physics Letters
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found evidence for an unusual superconducting state in CsV3Sb5, a so-called Kagome metal that exhibits exotic electronic properties. The finding could shed new light on how superconductivity emerges in materials where phenomena such as frustrated magnetism and intertwined orders play a major role.
Kagome metals are named after a traditional Japanese basket-weaving technique that produces a lattice of interlaced symmetrical triangles. Physicists are interested in this configuration (known as a Kagome pattern) because when the atoms of a metal or other conductor are arranged in this fashion, their electrons behave in unusual ways.
An example is frustrated magnetism, which occurs when electrons are “not happy to live together”, observes Ludovic Jaubert, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of Bordeaux in France who was not involved in the present work. In frustrated materials, not all interactions between electron spins can be satisfied at the same time, which prevents the spins from ordering themselves on long length scales. This failure has significant consequences for the material’s properties: if water behaved like this, for example, it would never freeze.
A polar bear perches on a thick chunk of sea ice north of Greenland in March 2016. These thicker, older pieces of sea ice don’t fully protect the larger region from losing its summer ice cover. (Image credit: Kristin Laidre/University of Washington)
Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming
The “Last Ice Area,” an Arctic region known for its thick ice cover, may be more vulnerable to climate change than scientists suspected, a new study has found.
This frozen zone, which lies to the north of Greenland, earned its dramatic name because even though its ice grows and shrinks seasonally, much of the sea ice here was thought to be thick enough to persist through summer’s warmth.
But during the summer of 2020, the Wandel Sea in the eastern part of the Last Ice Area lost 50% of its overlying ice, bringing coverage there to its lowest since record-keeping began. In the new study, researchers found that weather conditions were driving the decline, but climate change made that possible by gradually thinning the area’s long-standing ice year after year. This hints that global warming may threaten the region more than prior climate models suggested.
Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights
Coups
There is a strong Trump following in the military, and retired generals on the crazy train, making moot all the protestations about Bill Clinton being a “draft dodger.” Mango Mussolini has five deferments from fake bone spurs. Most of the retired generals are part of the Vietnam era, when they, returning from theater were spat on and called “baby killers,” they resented rich kids dodging service, yet they support one because of the coming preponderance of Melanin in America’s future: a future the old farts will never live to see. Most of those retired generals aren’t BIPOC (black, indigenous people of color). Many of the terrorists from January 6, 2021 are being arrested, but the jewel will be getting the seditionists that helped the insurrection getting taxpayer dollars. The seditionists in Congress don’t want a bipartisan commission because criminals don’t want a crime investigated in which they participated. They will also – on cue – complain a special committee comprised completely of Democrats is grossly partisan.
Any coup unpunished, whitewashed, or ignored becomes a rehearsal. The global economy would pivot on a dime if we suddenly became a failed state.
Crackpots
The highest-rated show on Fox Propaganda (AI inserts this automatically on my phone) used the legal excuse that “no one should take Tucker Carlson seriously.” Greg Abbott, after dozens of his constituents died this past winter, passed laws to let psychopaths open carry, and is continuing the grift of building the wall. Meanwhile, temperatures in the west are soaring to dangerous levels, and brownout is inevitable. Greater than one hundred degrees Fahrenheit without air conditioning is as deadly as freezing without central heating. He’d rather ban Critical Race Theory in K – 12 schools (where it’s not taught, unless kindergarteners are lawyers), and solve voter fraud (which doesn’t exist). But hey, we passed Juneteenth: we just can’t teach where it comes from, or what it meant to ex slaves, their descendants, and America. We managed to protect the Affordable Care Act, but Moscow Mitch has promised to “Merrick Garland” any Biden nominee if he gains the majority in 2022. It’s why they’re blocking votes and making it harder. It’s an admission of political impotence in a Democratic Republic: in a fair fight, they know they would lose.
The modern Republican Party died at the 2016 National Convention when they accepted a nonprofessional politician, a gameshow reality host playing the role of “billionaire” (only Cy Vance truly knows) as their bizarre nominee. They are now the party of conspiracists, domestic terrorists, insurrectionists, and QAnon. He plugged into an antidemocratic strain in the party that was tired of listening to talking points from conservative think tanks, and preferred ranting word salad from Archie Bunker, the racist dad brainwashed right along with them, and their shared hatred of the one-and-only African American president in 232 years of the federal republic. The former GOP have wined and dined racists, winked and nodded at “states rights” Dixiecrats since Reagan’s initial campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Entropy works in physics and politics: eventually, genteel racism was going to metastasize into a full-on fascist. It’s only natural the “grand old party” seeing no fortune in attracting, or being beholden to people of color became the “gang of Putin.” They thus needed no stinking platform in 2020. After decades of running on Reagan’s “aw shucks” populism, white ethnic nationalism is far more appealing. “Deconstructing the administrative state” means installing a dictator after destroying democracy.
Psychopaths
“Chief Executive” references one of the many roles in the US Constitution for an American president. It became convoluted with “Chief Executive Officer” during the Reagan years.
Three years into the new century, and two past 9/11, a documentary called “The Corporation” aired on screens and quickly went to video, which you can watch at the link.
Synopsis
One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. In this complex, exhaustive and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence.
Based on Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. The Corporation charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.
Case studies, anecdotes and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate dramas. Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing. In addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are also interviewed.
*****
In the book “The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success,” Kevin Dutton explains that there are jobs that can attract literal psychopaths – and also jobs that are least likely to do so.
So what jobs are most attractive to psychopaths? Here’s the list, originally published online by Eric Barker: 1. CEO, 2. Lawyer, 3. Media (Television/Radio), 4. Salesperson, 5. Surgeon, 6. Journalist, 7. Police officer, 8. Clergy person, 9. Chef, 10. Civil servant.
And for those looking to potentially avoid working with the least number of psychopaths, here’s the list of occupations with the lowest rates of psychopathy: 1. Care aide, 2. Nurse, 3. Therapist, 4. Craftsperson, 5. Beautician/Stylist, 6. Charity worker, 7. Teacher, 8. Creative artist, 9. Doctor, 10. Accountant.
The premise of The Corporation is, if the corporation is a person, what kind of person is it? According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders, the only “type” of person this can be is a psychopath.
So, why do we want a psychopath to have the nuclear codes? A care aide sounds more species-extending, and a lot more stable than fake billionaire gameshow hosts.
Juneteenth is my sister and my late father’s 96th birthday. I will take a break next week in celebration and remembrance.
Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, Einstein, General Relativity
Note: From comments on a previous post, maybe science writers need to work on their chosen list of metaphors?
In the far reaches of the Universe, a supermassive black hole is throwing a tantrum.
It’s blowing a tremendous wind into intergalactic space, and we’re seeing the storm light from 13.1 billion years ago when the Universe was less than 10 percent of its current age. It’s the most distant such tempest we’ve ever identified, and its discovery is a clue that could help astronomers unravel the history of galaxy formation.
“The question is when did galactic winds come into existence in the Universe?” said astronomer Takuma Izumi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).
“This is an important question because it is related to an important problem in astronomy: How did galaxies and supermassive black holes coevolve?”
In their experiments, the researchers used ultrathin crystals consisting of a single layer of atoms. These sheet was sandwiched between two layers of mirror-like materials. The whole structure acts like a cage for light and is called a microcavity.
Physicists have taken a step towards realizing the smallest-ever solid-state laser by generating an exotic quantum state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in quasiparticles consisting of both matter and light. Although the effect has so far only been observed at ultracold temperatures in atomically thin crystals of molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2), it might also be produced at room temperature in other materials.
When particles are cooled down to temperatures just above absolute zero, they form a BEC – a state of matter in which all the particles occupy the same quantum state and thus act in unison, like a superfluid. A BEC made up of tens of thousands of particles therefore behaves as if it were just one single giant quantum particle.
“Devices that can control these novel light-matter states hold the promise of a technological leap in comparison with current electronic circuits,” explains Anton-Solanas, who is in the quantum materials group at Oldenburg’s Institute of Physics. “Such optoelectronic circuits, which operate using light instead of electric current, could be better and faster at processing information than today’s processors.”
Anton-Solanas, Schneider and colleagues studied crystals of MoSe2 that were just a single atomic layer thick. MoSe2belongs to a family of materials known as transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). In their bulk form, these materials act as indirect band-gap semiconductors, but when scaled down to a monolayer thickness, they behave as direct band-gap semiconductors, capable of efficiently absorbing and emitting light.
In their experiments, the researchers assembled sheets of MoSe2 less than a nanometer thick and sandwiched them between alternating layers of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide (SiO2/TiO2), which reflect light like a mirror. The resulting structure is known as a microcavity and acts like a cage for light. “It’s like trapping the light-emitting material in a room filled with mirrors and mirrors only,” Tongay tells Physics World. “The light gets reflected these mirrors and is absorbed by the material back and forth.”
Icebergs break away from Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica last year. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming
Antarctica’s monster Pine Island Glacier—one of the fastest melting glaciers on the continent—is giving climate scientists new reasons to worry.
The trouble has to do with its ice shelf, a frozen ledge at the edge of the Pine Island Glacier. The ice shelf helps stabilize and contain the vast flow of ice behind it.
But now it’s crumbling into pieces.
In the last five years alone, more than a fifth of the ice shelf has broken away in the form of gigantic icebergs, which fall into the ocean and drift away.
At the same time, the glacier has begun losing ice at a faster rate. Since 2017, the speed of the ice flowing from the glacier into the sea has accelerated by 12%.
These losses are summarized in a new study, published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
The big question is what will happen next, according to lead study author Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington. There’s a chance the ice shelf may stabilize and the flow of ice will slow down, or at least stop speeding up.
Then again, “the other scenario is this process will continue and the shelf will fall apart far more quickly than we expected,” he told E&E News.
Physics and Nano 